Tara Brach - Guided Meditation: Relaxing Back

Episode Date: July 4, 2014

2014-07-02 Guided Meditation: Relaxing Back

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. And begin in a simple way, just taking a few full breaths. I'd like to invite you to expand the in-breath, so it's more full than usual, inhaling deeply and filling the lungs. And again, that slow-out breath, see if you can relax as you let go. Softening, releasing, letting go. And one more time, inhaling deeply, slow out breath, just feel softening down the length of the body, letting go, letting go, allowing the breath to resume in its natural rhythm, just relaxing

with the inflow and the outflow and noticing the quality of a bit more presence, more collectedness, perhaps. Letting the attention rest in the heart area as you inquire within and just sense your intention for tonight. So you're listening to sense what is it that really brings you here tonight. If your heart could express its deepest yearning or longing, what is it you're longing for? Just with that felt sense of sincerity, you may be able to be able to.

You might gently bring the palms together, just deepening the presence in the heart area as we chant this simple, very universal mantra, or sound current of om. So we'll chant together three times. Begin by inhaling deeply. Sensing yourself here. Right here, you might even mentally whisper the word here. Feel the body from the inside out, breathing and present. when there's tension in the body, it's really our way of resisting presence, holding against,

pushing away. So we'll begin with a gentle scanning through the body, releasing or relaxing areas of tightness. And you might begin with the eyes. A lot of thinking produces a lot of tightness around the eyes. So let the brow be smooth. You can imagine smiling into the eyes. That helps. Corners of the eyes up. Let the eyes be soft, easy. And in a similar way, relaxing the jaw.

Slight smile at the mouth. Ticknathan calls this smile yoga because it sends a message to our whole nervous system to be at ease to relax the fight-flight-flight-free conditioning. The mouth is smiling, the eyes smiling, and then just letting the attention go to the shoulder area. Sense that you could bring your whole awareness inside the shoulders. And just notice if there's a natural loosening or softening that's possible. Sometimes the sense of the shift from ice to water, that kind of melting can be helpful. ice to water

and water to vapor you're feeling from the inside out the shoulders feeling just the aliveness there the movement and space inside the shoulders in a similar way you can bring the awareness inside the hands

let them rest in a very easy effortless way right now softening them And just notice as you soften the sensations that you can start feeling in your hands, softening a little more. Sensing that as you relax, you can experience more aliveness, tingling, vibrating, perhaps pulsing, sensations of warmth, pressure, letting there be an openness to the

chest and just feeling inside the chest, letting the awareness fill the chest, aware of sensations, aliveness and space inside the chest, loosening the belly sounds, softening the belly, and see if you can let this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and now this one and again, relaxing back. and sensing this wakeful openness that life is appearing and dissolving him, relaxing back and resting as the silence that's listening. It's the nature of mind to re-contract and to move into thought forms, kind of time travel into the past and the future, into commentary.

So our practice is just simply to notice when we do, to have the intention to notice. And when you notice that the mind's been often the trance of thinking, to relax back again, just to relax open, aware again of the sounds that are actually right here, relaxing open, and perhaps relaxing the body a little bit again. softening the shoulders, softening the hands, softening the belly, and feeling the breath fill you deeply, relaxing the heart, relaxing back, and letting this life live through you, this whole play of sensations and emotions and sounds, sensing this space of awareness as suffused with a quality of gentleness, kindness, so if

something arise that's difficult, just to sense the possibility of it being held in a gentle awareness. To relax back means to notice in this moment if there's anything you're holding on to, any thought that's sticky, that the mind's inside. If there's anything you're resisting, to relax back is to notice and then again settle back. back into this living presence right here, recognizing and allowing the changing flow, letting be. You might gently inquire and sense if it's possible to let go just a little bit more right

now, to relax back a bit more fully, experiment with just letting life be exactly how it is, resting as awareness, wakeful openness, if the mind's been more. wandering, with a genuine kindness and interest, discover what it's like to relax back once again. I really rest in this changing flow of aliveness, not opposing anything, not holding to anything. To sense in the foreground this changing play of sound and sensation right here, fully open. and just sense in the background this openness, this alert inner stillness that's aware, just rest as awareness as this source of this whole play of aliveness.